Thomas Burman
Michael P. Grace Professor of Medieval Studies
Specializations
Ancient and Medieval, Intellectual, Religious
Geographies
Africa and the Middle East, Europe
Biography
Thomas E. Burman is the author of Religious Polemic and the Intellectual History of the Mozarabs, c. 1050-1200 (1994); Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560 (2007); and, with Brian A. Catlos and Mark D. Meyerson, of The Sea in the Middle: The Mediterranean World, 650-1650 (2022). With Sergio LaPorta, Alison Vacca et al., he is editor and translator of A Connecting Polemic in the Medieval Mediterranean: The Correspondence of Leo III and ʿUmar II (2026). He is currently writing a book entitled Beyond the Mediterranean: The Intellectual Venture of Ramon Martí OP, 1250-84. His research has been supported by fellowships from the Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations as well as the National Endowment for the Humanities. In 2025-26 he was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. In addition to serving as head of the department of history at the University of Tennessee (2007-13) he was the Riggsby Director of the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the same university (2015-17) and Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval Institute at Notre Dame (2017-2025). In 2026-27 he is a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar and in 2027-28 he will be President of the Medieval Academy of America.
Research Interests
Medieval Mediterranean, Jewish-Christian-Muslim Relations, Intellectual, Cultural, and the History of Orientalism.
Education
Ph.D. University of Toronto
Licentiate of Mediaeval Studies, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies
M.A. University of Toronto
B.A. Whitman College
